Jennifer-Wenzel_Real-Estate-Capital_20251222_R02

Jennifer: [00:00:00] My biggest advice is to decide if you want to be a generalist or specialist. Everybody wants to stay a generalist, and obviously I'm a generalist. There's no right answer, but I think I've always been impressed with the people who take an interest in “I wanna be a hotel person. And I wanna go deep into hotels and really learn it and really become an expert” because I think a lot of young people are scared to do that.

So I think really dig deep and if you wanna be a generalist, great, but if you do have a passion for one of the property types, I think that can really propel your career. 

Nancy: Hello and thanks for tuning in to Real Estate Capital. I'm your host, Nancy Lashine of Park Madison Partners. Capital is the lifeblood of the real estate industry, but the decisions on where and how it's allocated are driven by people and personalities. Who are they? What motivates them? What can we learn from their experiences? On this show, we introduce you to some of the real estate industry's most influential thought leaders and [00:01:00] decision makers, and we talk about what is important to them, how they make critical decisions, who has influenced them and a lot more. 

Our guest on today's episode is Jennifer Wenzel, senior Investment Manager in the Real Estate Group at Texas Teachers Retirement System, often referred to as Texas TRS or just TRS. Texas TRS is one of the largest public pension plans in the country, serving over 2.1 billion educators and managing over 230 billion in assets with 30 billion in real estate.

Jennifer's been at TRS for 16 years and over that time has directed their investments into funds, direct principal positions, and co-investments alongside managers. She played a pivotal role in shaping TRS's real assets portfolio and is one of the architects of the Principal Investment Program. In our conversation, Jennifer shares her path into real estate, how TRS thinks about being a long-term partner in a dynamic evolving market, and what it really means to build conviction, trust, [00:02:00] and perspective as an institutional investor.

It's a thoughtful and wide ranging discussion with someone who brings intellectual rigor and genuine curiosity to her work. And I'm delighted to welcome Jennifer Wenzel to the show.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for doing this. I'm so happy to see you. 

Jennifer: Yeah, of course. No, I feel like this is an exciting podcast that you've created and happy to be a part of it. 

Nancy: Well, that's great. I know people will be interested to hear about you and your personal story and also what you're doing at TRS. So why don't we just dive right in. 

You're well known as someone who's been at TRS for 16 years. Tell us a little bit about who you were before there, where'd you grow up and how'd you end up in the real estate business? 

Jennifer: Yeah, sure. So I'm one of those odd people who actually started in real estate through internships in college.

I was born near San Antonio in a small town, and then I went to [00:03:00] UT and I didn't have a major at first, but was able to get a job at a retail developer here in Austin who developed grocery anchored shopping centers for HEB. That was a great place to kind of see the business and start to learn about it.

And from there I ended up working for an office tenant rep. broker. I was also part of the undergraduate real estate business club and ended up working at Guarantee Bank in Dallas for an internship. So, all of those internships were super helpful to help me decide what I wanted to do. I was a finance major though, and wanted to get on the investment side.

So coming outta college, I was lucky enough to get a job at Crow Holdings in Dallas. So I was part of their real estate fund analyst team and that was a great place to start, 'cause we got to work across all property types. So retail office, industrial, multifamily, and land. And I was there for three to four years, from 2004-2007.

Nancy: Oh, the heyday! [00:04:00] 

Jennifer: So, great time in the industry. Great, great time to start.

Nancy: So did you just think everything went up into the right? 

Jennifer: I did. It was, it was in the time where I was an analyst. And always looking at the numbers. And at one point we were looking at a multifamily development and it had an infinite IRR and I was trying to figure out how that worked and it was because we were getting a hundred percent construction debt, and didn't have to put any equity in. 

Nancy: Yeah. 

Jennifer: So that doesn't exist anymore, but that did happen at the time. I'd been there a while and ended up seeing a job for another real estate, private equity firm in Austin, and my daughter just wanted to get back to Austin being a proud Texas Longhorn. 

So it piqued my interest and it was a group called Cherokee Investment Partners. They were based in North Carolina, but had one person in their office in Austin and I met him and really connected and decided to take the leap. Cherokee had raised a billion dollar fund in ‘07, which was pretty large for the time, so I thought that'd be a great opportunity to work on some acquisitions [00:05:00] and get some different experience. They also had been very forward thinking as far as sustainability, brownfield development. They had a whole sustainability team at the real estate fund. Got an environmental scientist with the ponytail on staff and I got lead certified through that.

In college I had taken urban planning classes and I always really liked that side of the business too, so it kind of connected my two interests that way. Unfortunately, it was short-lived. I was only there a couple years before the GFC hit, and that's where I was when things started to crack.

In October of ‘08 Cherokee shut down their Austin office. I wanted to stay in Austin. I didn't know what Texas Teachers was, the pension fund. I did not seek out to work at a pension fund actually at all, but my boss at Cherokee knew Steve LeBlanc who had just been hired to run the real estate team at TRS.

I met with him and thought, “oh, this will be a short term gig”. I applied to get my MBA and got into UT, [00:06:00] but deferred a year thinking, oh, I won't stay long, but now it's been 16 years. So I actually liked it more than I thought. 

Nancy: The best kind of planning. That's a great story. 

Jennifer: The other interesting thing I like to point out is the difference from Crow to Cherokee.

At Crow, if you were there for seven years, you got to go on Harlan's yacht. That was like what you were working towards. Whereas at Cherokee, if you were there five years, you got to go to their orphanage in Ethiopia. And so it was just a very different type of firm. The head of Cherokee drove a Prius and they were very into sustainability. They did a lot with rebuilding New Orleans after the hurricane. It was good to get a variety of different types of people who are all in the same industry. 

Nancy: Yeah. And different cultures. 

Jennifer: Yeah. 

Nancy: I think of Cherokee as really, they were the first ones to try to institutionalize or find institutional capital for cleaning up brownfields.

And I don't know how… did they end up doing [00:07:00] much of that before the crash?

Jennifer: Yeah, so the founder of Cherokee, he had been a Bain consultant and the way he got into it is he was consulting for a brick making company, and so they found out that it was a time that underground storage tanks that were leaking a gas station, so the brick company could get paid to come and take that dirty dirt away. They'd fire it through the brick making process and then sell the bricks on the back end. So they're getting paid on both sides. And so he thought he could use that in a real estate sense, where if you're getting, if you're providing a public good and kind of getting incentives on the front end to help clean something up. Then you can also create value on the backend. 

They did a lot of projects across the country in Denver, California, New Jersey. We had some small projects in Texas that I worked on, but the bigger ones were across the country and unfortunately their big complicated mixed use, public private partnerships, public financing layered all together. So when the GFC hit, it just didn't work as well. 

Nancy: [00:08:00] Is Cherokee gone today? 

Jennifer: I think they are still around doing some small private equity things. 

Nancy: Yeah, no, but they were definitely early for their time. So you end up at Texas Teachers and how's your role evolved over what's now? 16 years?

Jennifer: It was a great place to land. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. They had just restarted the real estate program at Texas Teachers in 2006-2007. TRS had been in the real estate industry in the eighties and did a lot of participating mortgages. That didn't work out so well...

Nancy: Whoops, yeah. 

Jennifer: So they got out of real estate and were prohibited from investing in real estate for a long time. So when I got here, we were just starting, our real estate allocation was 3% and there was 6, 7, 8 people. We were in a growth mode and thankfully the timing was good [00:09:00] coming out of the GOC.

At first we were investing mainly in funds. We did some interesting deals at that time, buying some industrial from Prologis at a 10 cap, which should have been easy, but that was a portfolio trade that happened because of the dislocation. And so getting to learn through that was really great.

And we also participated in GGP. And so there was a lot going on. Strategically though, we were focusing on how do we create alpha in other ways? So that's when we looked into doing more co-invest in principal investments. 

Nancy: Yeah, and you've really been instrumental in building up the co-investment program and the direct investment program?

Jennifer: Well, it’s definitely a team effort and I should have mentioned like we all work on behalf of the teachers of Texas. There's over 2 million teachers that we try to create value for every day, including friends and family of mine. I think we're all personally invested in doing the best for that mission as well.

But [00:10:00] yeah, I mean we wanted to do more and so as a team we started trying to leverage the relationships that we had across what we call our premier list, and that's the 30 or 40 different partners that we work with. So it's everything from co-investments, pre-approved, co-invest capital and sidecar vehicles.

And then we also started trying to do more programmatic joint ventures and investing sporadically operating companies as well, providing co-GP capital. And so that's definitely evolved over time with the industry for sure. 

Nancy: You mentioned that the real estate portfolio was 3% when you joined. What percentage of the total plan is it today?

Jennifer: It's grown to 15%. We've been pretty stable with that the last five to seven years, I would say. It's been a stable allocation. We're underweight right now just given where the stock market denominator is.

Nancy: That will be music to many people's ears. What is the total pension plan? 

Jennifer: Total size is [00:11:00] around 230 billion.

Real estate's 15%, so around 30 billion of NAV. The way our portfolio breaks down is 80% US, 15 to 20% outside the US. We're unique compared to some of our peers in that we're only a third core, the rest non-core. So the role we play in the trust is more of an alpha generator. We have to be our benchmark, which is ODCE by 150 basis points.

So because of that, we tend to be more non-core than a lot of our peers. 

Nancy: Why is that, that you've decided to have real estate be more of a higher yield vehicle in the portfolio? 

Jennifer: Our asset allocation team works to try and make the allocations to generate relative value, risk return. And so I think that they view us as a diversifier and alpha generator.

They can get cash flow in lower returns from other places, like tips and things. That's the role, I think all alternatives are tasked with [00:12:00] playing. 

Nancy: You guys were early in so many different things. I wanna talk about the international exposure, but you mentioned the premier list, which was a concept that the first time I ever heard about it was from Texas Teachers. What is the premier list and how has it been useful for you? 

Jennifer: Yeah, I mean that was really kind of the first regime of my time at TRS was our CIO Brit Harris. And he was instrumental in kind of putting that in place. At the time it was the idea to go bigger and deeper with fewer managers, and at first we kind of viewed it like, well, why are we being boxed in? But we quickly realized it was an easy way to focus our efforts and our time, and an easy way to say no. 

Nancy: Yeah.

Jennifer: So that helped. But I think it did make us try and use our relationships more strategically.

That's the purpose of it, and it really is more of a long-term mindset rather than just doing a deal with someone.

Nancy: Yeah, it's a fantastic idea. How fluid is the list? 

Jennifer: It's been more [00:13:00] flexible in the last several years. I feel like we have the ability to be more nimble and find ways to access partners as we've pivoted to more of a programmatic JV, trying to find the best operators in different niche sectors.

We've just had to be more flexible with it. And so I would say we're not looking to, we don't add and remove people all the time, but you're able to use it where we need to. 

Nancy: Do you still have to be on the premier list to do a venture? 

Jennifer: Yeah. You also have to be on that list, and then we also have Albourne doing back office operational due diligence, so that's part of our process too.

Nancy: Okay. How have you decided to access some of these new niche sectors, whether it's BTR, or IOS or data centers, or pick your niche? 

Jennifer: I like to say that in my time here we've tried to be more entrepreneurial, kind of bottoms up, focused, reactive to the best ideas from our partners. That's not to say that we don't have, you [00:14:00] know, top down strategic mindset as well, but we have been able to leverage our partners and here where they're seeing opportunity and then use that.

So that's how a lot of the niches have come in. I think we've done everything from SFR pretty early to studio media space, life sciences, things like that that are maybe now out of favor. We have those in our portfolio, but we have also done other things like IOS. We've done a lot of, let me think…

Nancy: Student housing, senior housing, medical office. 

Jennifer: We've done more student housing and done senior housing through the years. I just think that as we've done those being diversified and you don't know, like with life sciences where the, when the market's gonna turn. And so we've tried to make sure we layer our portfolio with some of these niches that are more cyclical.

Nancy: Yeah. So for something that's newer, like SFR for example, how do you decide whether or not to lean in with [00:15:00] substantial capital?

Jennifer: SFR was an housing alternative play for us, and so we really saw it as a way to get that same stability of return of multifamily, but played to a different demographic.

And so that one was just a way to diversify our housing exposure and we still see that as attractive multifamily is definitely moderating these days, and so that's why we've tended to do more student housing the last couple of years, but we still are mindful of what our benchmark has in it. We also compare our Benchmark ODCE to the REIT index, and those are very different.

And so we've kind of had a hybrid model between those two and how we monitor our niche exposures. 

Nancy: So if you think about REITs, for example, right now, generally, most people would argue that they're undervalued or they traded a lower NAV to private real [00:16:00] estate. Do you try to arbitrage the public and private markets?

Jennifer: It’s funny because we have always been more of a private oriented portfolio. We haven't had a mandate to put REITs in, though the last several years we have seen that relative value arbitrage. And so there were some people on our team who worked on an index strategy and we were able to capitalize on that from 22 to 24, and then more recently, there's been some ideas of how to take advantage of the multifamily dispersion in private versus public pricing.

I think we're doing more, more focus on that.  

Nancy: How do you think about it in terms of order of magnitude? Like, do you do as a percentage of privates to the public? 

Jennifer: Our benchmarks are still private, so that's where we worry about volatility and what that can introduce into our portfolio. So I don't think it'll ever be a huge part of what we do. 

Some of our peers use it [00:17:00] to finish their allocation, but we haven't done it that way. It's just been more tactical. 

Nancy: And given that you need to beat the ODCE by a fairly substantial benchmark, how do you think about investing in core so you can beat the ODCE? That's not easy. 

Jennifer: Yeah, I mean, our core is split half in our index through an index vehicle called IDR that we helped get off the ground several years ago. And then the rest is through separate accounts where we can actually put on up to 50% leverage, which provides alpha because the benchmark is more lowly levered, so just being able to do what we think is still conservative leverage at 50% helps and more attractive fee structures through separate accounts.

Nancy: How important are fee structures in helping you to generate these higher alpha higher returns? 

Jennifer: I mean, I think, obviously very important. And so we talk about that a lot, especially in value-add type strategies where the operators are [00:18:00] getting paid heavy, heavy incentives. And so trying to get the fee structure right for the strategy is super important.

We don't like to pay for catchups ever. That's kind of been our mantra through the years. That's just one thing that's super important to us. And then also not getting too caught up in the fees though, because allocation to property types is what's gonna drive most of your return at the end of the day, even though it's harder to predict kind of staying balanced that way. 

Nancy: and TRS is kind of coined the phrase being a partner of choice.

How do you be a partner of choice when you're also very fee conscious? What is it that you're, how are you thinking? Why do people come to you guys? 

Jennifer: Hopefully we're fair and balanced with people. We have a big team, so now we're up to almost 20 people compared to our peers. We have a lot of different ways that we can interact with the market, and I think that we're able to respond quickly [00:19:00] just by being, giving good feedback, making sure we're clear in how we communicate.

I think those are all really valuable and often overlooked by busy LPs that are pulled in so many different directions. I do feel like our team has the ability to be more customized in our approach and how we cover the market. 

Nancy: What do you look for in a good partner? 

Jennifer: Oh, man. I feel like that depends on what you're trying to get out of it.

I think just transparency, it goes back to… like there is no perfect partner, but it's just a feeling of trust that you get, how are they answering your questions? I like people who communicate directly and I don't want a long drawn out answer to a simple question and things like that. 

Nancy: That's the worst.

Jennifer: Things like that can erode trust.

Because your communication isn't just verbal, you know? And so whenever you get to sit down with someone and really understand how [00:20:00] forthcoming they are with you, that matters to me at least a lot more. Also, how innovative are they? Are they just there for the fees? I mean, that's definitely a barbell in our industry right now.

You can tell the managers who just want AUM from the ones who are incentivized to actually earn, promote or make good investments. How are they trying to hold on to assets versus working with you on a good hold sell analysis for what's best for the portfolio, things like that. 

Nancy: When you look at some of these organizations that have just put a lot of capital out over the last, say, four or five years, knowing that those recent deals are probably out of the promote, have you seen any good sort of examples of how managers keep their teams together?

Jennifer: No, I really haven't. I think that, in this timing in the market, there are a lot of reset bases and people are trying to figure out where there could be opportunities going forward. We've seen more people leaving and [00:21:00] starting their own things in that kind of mid to senior principal, but not at a partner level. I think that's where people are hungry and want to take their career to the next level with the next reset in basis. 

Nancy: Yeah, and we, as you can imagine, we talk to people all day long who want to start something new, and we're always cautioning them at how challenging it is. Any particular advice for people who wanna think about starting their own thing?

Jennifer: I think deciding whether you're really gonna try to go it alone versus plug into a bigger organization is a huge decision. I think trying to create a seed portfolio, obviously that's what everyone wants to see is actually the ability to source, and once you kind of have that visibility, then people are able to get behind you. So, focusing on that is probably the best advice I would have. 

Nancy: Yeah, it's true and that's often, but we [00:22:00] tell a lot of folks and it's a lot easier to start out with doing recaps or continuation vehicles or recapitalizing a portfolio than it is, you know? 

Jennifer: The decision to do a fund versus just being an operator. Our business is still very local and regional and so it is an interesting time in our industry where people are going back to the basics with operations. And so the allocators that are choosing to partner with operators. It might be newer operators that don't have as much track record because they are starting new.

I just think those operators don't need to have funds. They can still capitalize deals one off and create that value and that will attract the capital. 

Nancy: You've been in this business for a while and if people ask me this question a lot, how has the business changed and where do you see it going? So I'm gonna just put it out there for you.

How has it changed in terms of the industry, the types of managers who come [00:23:00] to you, the structures that you can work on today, and where do you see it over the next few years? 

Jennifer: We're still having that same classic discussion around like generalist versus specialist. So, I do think that one is still never gonna be solved, but where I'm seeing the industry change the most is for those medium-sized organizations, how are they growing their companies and there's more options these days. If you have a decent-sized company that has a good collateral base, there's a lot of options. Do you take entity level capital? Do you sell a piece of your business? A lot of those didn't exist and people, real estate firms, were doing deals. They weren't thinking about how to take on corporate private equity to grow their firm.

I think there is more, how do you finance the GP? And we're doing, we're doing some more types of investing like that, whether it [00:24:00] be through trying to get rev shares and to help bring LP dollars and grow a firm and have that rev share to participate in the growth that our LP dollars are providing to doing co-GP strategies at the asset level where we'll do programmatic 20 to 40 million dollars of co-GP at the asset level to help provide that gap capital that they're not getting, promotes back as fast, not getting as much leverage in today's market. We're trying to fill those voids where we can. 

Nancy: That's super smart and it makes so much sense. How do you feel about it if you're on the other side of the table and a group comes, that you're working with, gets capital from somebody else.

It could be a PE shop or it could be a GP stake shop, and are you comfortable with that? Are there things that you're particularly looking for when you see those transactions? 

Jennifer: Yeah, I mean I think it is more accepted in the industry these days. It depends on if you're selling a control position or not.

If it's a minority position, I think those are [00:25:00] pretty accepted. The ones where they're taking outright control, we've seen that be a little more of a struggle because it just has to change the culture of the organization and more uncertainty around the future. It's providing an option for growth and facilitating generational transfer, but I think it does change the culture a lot of times.

If it's a minority transaction, I think those are more accepted and then, depending on how you're approaching the GP equity side of it for growth, our industry has always been a 95-5 doing deals culture. Like our PE team is like, well, why do you need 5%? And I'm like, well, that's just the standard, even if you're getting it from somebody else.

So they're like, well, why don't you just do a 98-2 deal? And I'm like, well, that's just not the industry standard because it's more okay to go fund your 5% with friends and family or now institutional money that's coming in. I think LPs should ask more questions around how much [00:26:00] actual skin in the game does that 5% partner have, I think that five or 10%, where is it coming from? That should be asked a lot more often. 

Nancy: You've had some commingled fund managers, you know? Substantial ones in the industry who've sold a hundred percent of the business. Maybe it was an initially 50%, and then went to full control.

And at the end of the day, that allows those groups to have more scale, to maybe go global, to have some insurance company capital potentially behind them. Are you sanguine and will you continue to kind of support groups if you believe in the people and they communicate well with you? 

Jennifer: Yeah, I think so. We just monitor it more closely and obviously they're all a little different and different reasons why, and I think if you're trying to do it to pass down ownership to the next generations, that's a great reason and it makes people more aligned at that level to continue the stability of the firm.

We've seen the [00:27:00] opposite where sometimes the founders aren't willing to give up those economics and it kind of starts to create a void that's not gonna help the organization survive for the long term. But overall, I think we feel like those transactions should help the brand and help grow the company. 

Nancy: For a long time, you've been doing things internationally.

I remember early on you were in Brazil, obviously you're in Europe. What, that 30% that's international? It’s 20%? 

Sorry. Okay. 30 billion AUM is a lot of money, but still, why go internationally at all? Why not just stay domestic? And how do you deal with the risk factors like political risk or currency risk? How do you think about it? 

Jennifer: Yeah, I mean when I started, we were just starting our international exposure and the idea was always diversification. We wanted to have at least some complimentary, [00:28:00] non-correlated US exposure. And so how do we do that? At the time, the emerging markets were very popular and everyone was looking toward that to find opportunity. I think that was a point in time and we definitely learned a lot from our Mexico and Brazil exposure that we wish we hadn't gone that emerging and stayed more Europe/Asia. And so that's been more of our focus and always has. 

We have a London team that was created about 10 years ago, and that was to help us have more boots on the ground and have more of an insight into what's going on in that market.

We mainly started out doing funds in Europe and Asia, and I think they have been a diversifier for us and have given us ways to access our managers that are global, give us some exposure there, but where we could do more country specific investing. Where we saw opportunity, we did that in Japan and [00:29:00] Australia and Europe.

And so now we're able to do some programmatic JVs in London and Europe as well. So I think that it gives us a broader reach. Some of the same themes in the US play out over there. So yeah, we're trying to make sure we're diversified. 

Nancy: How are you thinking about Asia today and where in Asia do you find it interesting?

Jennifer: I don't work on our Asia portfolio, but we obviously had some Pan-Asia funds that were in China, and that has obviously pulled back. So it's a big focus on Australia and Japan. 

Nancy: India as well?

Jennifer: We have never done anything there. 

Nancy: Okay, interesting. 

Jennifer: Yep. 

Nancy: Has the international portfolio more recently performed up to expectations?

Jennifer: Oh man, that's a hard question. I think there's, it's definitely not hit the hurdles that we had hoped, but as far as, you never know what the world [00:30:00] is gonna bring you, so I think we still view it as a diversifier. 

Nancy: No, that makes sense. What are you most excited about in the real estate space these days?

Jennifer: Oh, it's been an interesting couple years because of where we're allocated, we have had pretty big capital plans, so I think we have a pretty robust capital planning model that I always like to highlight because it's helped us forecast calls, distributions, and try to keep us at that 15% allocation, and it spits out a number of what our commitment pacing should be.

So this year and last year it was four to 5 billion new commitments. Looking at a market like this, there's not a lot of obvious themes. We did do data centers a couple of years ago and did that in a very specific way where we didn't go into funds that were trying to create platform value. We wanted to do it in more isolated single investments, single exposure, where we thought that that was, that was the best access, but other [00:31:00] than data centers, we've done a lot of niche type strategies and it's been where we see the best cash flow, the best positive leverage. I just continue to see people investing with negative leverage and hoping the growth is gonna bail them out, and that's just hard for us to do. So we've tried to also not chase yield that way just to get higher yields, but do it in the sectors where we see true fundamental demand and growth. 

I mean it's everything from IOS. We made our first manufactured housing commitment in a while this year. Student housing, like I said, net lease is a big piece of that. The medical office, I'm sure I'm missing some. 

Nancy: Right. And you're doing some of this in funds and some of this direct. Yeah.

Jennifer: Oh, I should also mention credit that is obviously a big deal, it's a piece of our portfolio and probably the most consensus of our team's [00:32:00] way to play this market environment. But we don't want it. we can't let it eat up too much of our capital because we still have an equity benchmark.

Nancy: Right? 

Jennifer: If we're capping our upside, that could be a problem. But we do think the relative value there is pretty attractive. So we've played that in a lot of different ways. Construction lending, we did a second-lien home mortgage strategy, resi home mortgage strategy.

We've done lending a lot of different ways lately, but I think it'll never be more than 15% of our portfolio. 

Nancy: Well, it's been a great place to be the last few years. 

Jennifer: Yes. 

Nancy: Any sneak previews as to what you're really looking at in 2026?

Jennifer: I think that we're still, the sausage is still being made, I guess. Everyone seems to really like retail.

We're trying to figure out a way to access retail, but then the demand side of that story kind of tampered our excitement about it, like the [00:33:00] consumer demand. But retail storage is a place where we haven't had a lot of exposure in our portfolio, so spending some time there. Senior housing is very polarizing, and our team of people love it and people hate it. I think those are some sectors that we're continuing to spend time on. 

Nancy: Yeah, and there they are. It's amazing that people are willing to talk about retail and senior housing again, 'cause for so long they were just persona non grata and, but they've performed super well.

So I'm gonna switch gears for a moment and talk about something that you've done as founder of Austin's WLI chapter. Tell me a little bit about your involvement in sort of helping to build some women's programs. 

Jennifer: Yeah, ULI has always been really great to me. I started in college getting involved and then was part of the Young Leaders group in Austin.

When I first started at TRS, I was able to [00:34:00] take a trip to Hong Kong and I met Brandon Sedloff, who's the head of Juniper Square, and he was running ULI in Asia. That was a great way to connect a lot of different worlds. I've always participated in the local Austin chapter and WLI was a piece of that that we started and we're able to get some really great speakers.

We have so many people come through Austin, like you and other people, so why not take advantage of these awesome women who are coming through and kind of elevate that for the local chapter? And so that was a big part of it and really appreciated being able to work on that. And then I'm on a national ULI council as well, and that's been just a great way to connect with people in a deeper way, because on the councils, you get to know the 40 or 50 people in your group really well over the course of years, and just being able to be a fly on the wall and learn from them has been really great. 

Nancy: Oh, I applaud you for all of that. We've also, ULI, the national chapter, has just started [00:35:00] a women's leadership program for women of mid-level and organizations moving up to senior levels. And we also have a women's entrepreneurship program, so those are amazing. It's just a great organization and just amazing. 

Jennifer: And going back to where we started, like the urban planning side, I've always, I'm heavy finance for sure these days, but ULI brings together so many of those different parts of our industry that should all be talking and connecting and really trying to solve problems for our built environment. 

Nancy: So you've managed to have this really fun, interesting career and be married and raise a couple of kids. Any advice for people who are listening? Like, how the heck do you do it all? 

Jennifer: Oh man. I think passion is what really drives you day to day and the excitement of getting to work with the most interesting people and finding transactions that you think are interesting.

My biggest advice is to decide if you want to be a generalist or [00:36:00] specialist. Everybody wants to stay a generalist, and obviously I'm a generalist. There's no right answer, but I think I've always been impressed with the people who take an interest in “I wanna be a hotel person and I wanna go deep into hotels and really learn it and really become an expert” because I think a lot of young people are scared to do that.

I think really dig deep and if you wanna be a generalist, great, but if you do have a passion for one of the property types, I think that can really propel your career. I'm always impressed with people who are experts in what they're doing. 

Nancy: Well, if you do anything long enough, you become an expert, including being an expert generalist.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Jennifer: Always be humble and never take things for granted. We all go through our days and they all kind of blend together, but as you start to really peel back the onion, the way that you connect with people and the way that you ask questions and stay curious and just really get to [00:37:00] humanize the industry, I think is really important.

Nancy: Something tells me your younger self already knew that. 

Jennifer: I don't know about that.

Nancy: I suspect that's the case. But if you could have dinner, Jennifer, with anybody dead or alive, who do you think it would be? 

Jennifer: I was thinking about this one. I am sure there's a better answer, but what popped into my mind is people who know me have heard me talk about this in the last couple years.

There's a guy named Ryan Holiday who was a New York Times bestselling author, and he ended up moving his family to Bastrop, which is a small town outside of Austin, and he bought the local bookstore and he has written several books now on Stoicism and Marcus Aurelius. And I didn't know much about that, but I've kind of picked it up through him.

I think it'd be really cool to have dinner with Ryan Holiday and I would say Marcus Aurelius, but I feel like that's very beyond my exposure at this point. But you [00:38:00] know, I think Ryan combines the stoicism values with the modern day, and I really like that he's bringing in how people live their life today and how relevant it is to try and not take things too seriously and control what you can control and not get too caught up in what you can't control.

Nancy: That's better advice never given! Anybody listening who knows Ryan, let him hear this. Who knows? You may end up having dinner with him 

Jennifer: Maybe. 

Nancy: Oh, Jennifer, I'll turn it around. Anything you want to ask me before we end here? 

Jennifer: I guess, how have you decided to take the risk that you've taken and then also once you take that risk, how do you stay so committed to it?

You've obviously really been so consistent of a presence in our industry, and I think everybody appreciates that about you and just showing up with how you show up for people every day. I've [00:39:00] always just been curious how you do that. 

Nancy: Gosh, I don't think I know the answer to that question.

My mother always used to say to me, showing up is half the battle. And I think it's just something that I grew up with and I know, in our family, we've taught our children. You make it happen every day. Like this is just, your job is just to be present. And that's all we've got really is to be present.

To be present for ourselves and for each other. When you make a commitment, it's just very real. So I never really thought about starting Park Madison Partners as a risk and I'm thinking you've probably heard this. I was a young mom and I just couldn't figure out how to balance everything I wanted to do in terms of working a full-time job for somebody else and be there for my family.

My husband was also at crazy hours. So, it was just, it was the way I could kind of, it was the best compromise I could come up with and, yes, [00:40:00] oftentimes I think life is the art of compromise. 

Jennifer: Yeah, definitely.

Nancy: I'm not sure I answered your question, but… there you go!

Jennifer: No, no, that's great. 

Nancy: You are, you are really an inspiration.

I know so many people listening will love to hear what you have to say about yourself, your career, what you've done at TRS. TRS has just been just a really unique, highly successful real estate program. The returns speak for themselves and as a program, you guys have done so many unique things from having your group of partners doing co-investments and directs, the emerging manager program now investing in platforms themselves. It's like you always seem to be on the forefront of what is next. And so we look forward to seeing… 

Jennifer: I'll just, I'll, I'll say one thing about that. We have had a great run the last several years.

We have had negative returns and that doesn't feel great. And I think that just means we have more work cut out for [00:41:00] ourselves going forward, it might not be as easy to do what we've done the last decade as it will be in the next decade. So we're gonna keep, keep trying our best. 

Nancy: Well, if you hadn't had negative returns, we think you were probably not being transparent. I mean, that's the real estate industry. 

Jennifer: It's a rebuilding. Rebuilding years. 

Nancy: Absolutely. But everything from, even thinking about building, a core open-end ODCE program and indexing it, that's an idea. I know people have thought about it for a couple of decades, but finally you finally helped make it happen and it makes so much sense.

So, wonderful. I really, really appreciate your, your coming on and, and talking so openly about what you guys are doing and thanks very much. 

Jennifer: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Nancy: I hope you enjoyed this episode of Real Estate Capital. Before you go, I have a quick favor to ask. We put a lot of thought and effort into this show and making sure we bring you insights from real [00:42:00] estate leaders that you don't normally find in the mainstream media.

So if you're enjoying this show. Please remember to follow it on your favorite podcasting app so you never miss an episode. We'd also love for you to share it with others or give us a review on Apple Podcasts so others can find us. Thanks again for tuning in. For more information about our firm, please visit our website@parkmadisonpartners.com.